


Creature Comforts

by Painted_LadyBones



Series: Do You Know This Feeling? [2]
Category: Music RPF, Rock Music RPF, The Rolling Stones
Genre: A band that's really a family, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Happy Old Men, Modern Setting, Old Friends, Platonic Love, Tenderness, The Glimmer Twins, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Painted_LadyBones/pseuds/Painted_LadyBones
Summary: “If there is no one to sleep next to, I'll sleep next to a stuffed animal. It makes me feel secure and safe. It's a little embarrassing to admit, I'm an old man now. It's important to me though.”-Keith Richards, 2016(Part of a series of one shots about The Rolling Stones' relationships with each other, from a variety of perspectives and eras).
Relationships: Charlie Watts & Mick Jagger & Ronnie Wood & Keith Richards
Series: Do You Know This Feeling? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2205954
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	Creature Comforts

Ronnie is the first to notice it. 

By the time a tour has really gotten going, Patti has generally returned home, and then the presence of a little stuffed teddy bear was a given on the bed in Keith’s hotel room. Ike was a holdover from when his girls were quite little, a beloved childhood toy that he had discreetly gotten from storage and started bringing around with him as a comforting roommate years ago. Despite what Charlie might say about his tendency to run his mouth, Ronnie had never made any comment on the plush’s presence. Everyone, in the strange, half-nomadic life they lived, needed something to find rest, and all things considered, especially with the world’s image of the guitarist as a junkie pirate king, it was a pretty mild form of soothing. 

But today, it’s gone. Already post-show, and there’s no sign of Ike anywhere in Keith’s room that Ronnie could see. His friend had well established habits, and the bear’s absence didn’t sit well with him. There was no reason for the toy to be gone...unless it had been lost!

That would explain why Keith had looked particularly pissed off at one of his assistants today, and also why he was sticking to Charlie like glue, wandering around their floor and watching him sketch instead of getting ready for bed himself. 

Well then, there was only one thing for it. Ronnie would have to venture out, and find a replacement himself. How hard could it be, on a breezy Paris night? 

◃◃◃

In search of his other musical half to approve a set list alteration, Mick isn’t exactly shocked not to find Keith in his room. Sure, he would often be abed by now, but there were no hard and fast rules with him on that, especially when they were touring, and flitting through time zones. He does half note the lack of a bear on Keith’s bed, idly wondering where it’s got to before turning his mind to the more pressing matters at hand. 

If he isn’t here, Ronnie has disappeared, and the few left with them on the Nolinski’s top floor are either out drinking or already in for the night, it seems only natural that he would probably be with Charlie. 

The drummer normally handed his spare keys off to Keith, and Keith often in turn gave one to Mick, trying to ensure that something survived their friend’s occasional absent mindedness and they didn’t have to grab hotel staff every single time he wanted to enter his room. Considering Charlie’s basically monastic existence on tour, Mick didn’t hesitate to press the slim plastic card against the door’s monitor and push it open, striding easily past the richly outfitted bathroom and empty sitting room. It was hardly as though he was going to walk in on a hastily cobbled together drug den, or a woman tied up to the bed posts. 

Instead, he heard faint snoring, and turned the corner towards the bedroom to see Charlie sitting on the floor, sketchpad and pencil in hand, gazing at the bed with his head leaning back onto the bottom of the black leather upholstered chaise lounge’s right arm. Above him, Keith was asleep, arm slung over his eyes and wearing nothing but joggers (which looked suspiciously like they once had been Mick’s) and a tour t-shirt from ages ago. Voodoo Lounge, it appeared.

“What the-” 

Before Mick could get any further, Charlie held up one spidery thin hand and shook his head, flipping the page in his sketchbook, and writing out quickly in his veiny, Baroque hand: 

_Can it wait?_

Mick nodded, and then flipped his palms upward, gesturing towards the sleeping guitarist. 

_No idea. He showed up an hour ago, and fell asleep when I came to sit next to him to draw._

He nodded once again, smiled fondly at the man who had kept him from killing Keith more than once, and retreated. 

As he walked back to his room, he considered just why his writing partner might have decided to decamp with Charlie. Charlie didn’t appear ill in any way, which was often when you could find the two together this late, affected by a migraine, or drunk. Keith had been bothering less and less with substances of pleasure, be they Jack or coke, in the last decade or so, and it hardly looked like he had passed out where he dropped. Why was he there, then? 

The bear! Mick hadn’t taken terribly much notice in his original search, but he now realized that Keith must have lost track of the little stuffed animal somewhere between Lisbon and Paris. It was his sleepmate, and the singer realized, unlocking his door as his thoughts raced after each other, that he might really not be able to sleep at all without it. 

That was no good for the band. Having an exhausted lead guitarist was bound to cause problems, or at least some kind of argument. Much as he would have liked to see how long Keith decided to utilize Charlie as his own personal stuffed animal, it seemed just a bit cruel to resign their percussionist to such a fate. No matter, he could solve the issue in no time at all. Well, an hour or two at the most. 

◃◃◃

If nothing else, Charlie was used to Keith’s constant, consistent presence on tour. It felt, sometimes, that he spent most of the day with an arm slung over his back, gripping his shoulder, or pushed up into his own. Even if they were playing, he could bet on Keith spending some percentage of the show turned in his direction, talking with and playing at him with equal joy, eager to help guide the beat that Charlie was getting off the ground, and then go off to weave and riff with the others. 

So it hadn’t raised any particular alarm bells when his friend followed him straight back to his room after they arrived at the hotel, only vanishing for a second to grab some makeshift pajamas before he hopped in Charlie’s shower, and then decamped onto the chaise, idly flipping through channels while he dug around for his sketch pad. And used the shower himself, not that his little glare for being denied his own bathroom seemed to have landed at all. Typical. 

When he’d settled himself on the chaise and showed no signs of moving after a few hours, the situation seemed altogether a bit more curious to Charlie. But he was hardly in a place to comment on weird tour sleeping habits. 

As Keith continued to snore behind him, though, and he contemplated Mick’s visit, an idea began to prickle at the back of his head. He packed for himself, and oftentimes he helped Keith or Ronnie as well, taking a final look at the bags that weren’t done up by roadies, and readjusting their horrific folding and layout techniques. One would have thought after all these years they could have learned something from him. 

But he hadn’t helped Keith last week, in Lisbon. Ronnie’s wife and girls had come to visit, and he had volunteered to help with the babies, or rather had been volunteered by Mick, looking after one of the little girls while Ron got his wife prepared for her flight back to London. 

Which made it more likely that Keith might have arrived with wrinkled shirts, or left something behind. The only thing Charlie could imagine him leaving behind that would cause such a disturbance, though, was his bear. Certainly it wasn’t that, he was normally careful of it. 

Twisting around until he could bring himself to standing without disturbing the slumbering gray haired figure, and silently cursing the way age had worn and stiffened his joints in the process, Charlie pulled the comforter off the bed, and set it gently over his friend. He might be less likely to wake, and wonder why he had been abandoned, with the weight of such a thing keeping him company. 

Gliding through the door which connected their rooms, the drummer wondered how he was going to fix such a thing in the dead of a Parisian night. 

◃◃◃

“This one, please.” 

Ronnie smiled, perhaps a touch desperately, at the graying woman. He had set straight off from the hotel, not quite sure what he would find or where at such an hour. Bars, mostly, it had turned out, and restaurants, and clubs. No one, it seemed, had foreseen the need for an emergency 24/7 toy store. 

Just as he was beginning to despair of ever finding anything, or finding his way back home, he had spotted a light shining from the alley behind a bustling falafel joint, the green facade slathered with sunshine yellow Hebrew characters. Next to a tiny boulangerie, shuttered for the night, was an equally miniscule shop, the door closed and its proprietor humming softly to herself as she began to draw the blinds and close the shop. 

“Excuse me!” 

He had shouted as soon as he saw the shelf behind her distressed wooden desk. While books, in various languages, took up most of the room, there were toys there. A plush black cat, its fur the color of burnt coal and its wide eyes a rich golden, shade, gazed at him from the very top shelf. 

“ _Pardon?”_

Oh no. 

“Um, may I have the cat please?” 

_“Le…”_

Her lilting voice trailed off, an obvious question. Try as he might, Ronnie couldn’t even begin to remember what the word for cat in French was. 

“Le cato, madame.” 

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he acknowledged quietly to himself that maybe adding a vowel to the end of a word wouldn’t quite make it French.

 _“Que voudriez-vous, monsieur?”_

Out of options, Ronnie did the only thing he could think to. He started purring. 

With a scandalized look, the woman pointed to the stuffed cat, and nodded sanguinely when her language impaired customer smiled widely. She only allowed herself to release a breath of relief when the obviously insane man had paid for his odd night time purchase, and gone. 

◃◃◃

A Christmas night market. Mick couldn’t remember the last time he had been to one of these. Probably when they were very young, and not very famous. Funny, how those poles had been flipped. With a knitted hat capturing all of his hair, though, and thick frame glasses covering his eyes, he doesn’t think that he’ll be too recognizable, milling amongst families, lovers, and friends enraptured in their own little worlds. 

He doesn’t have a specific idea of what he’s going to buy, yet, but just to be doing it fills him with an unexpected warmth. A little less than a decade ago, he had doubted that they would be doing anything to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stones, loath as he was to deal with Keith and all that opened him up to. It hurt, to consider the things that he had written, hurt badly. The apology, to his face, had been a bit unexpected. Neither of them was very good at apologizing for things. Still, he had felt precarious, unsure of whether or how he would be able to deal if everything went wrong. Again. Charlie had been the one, all sad blue eyes and wistful, thin lipped smiles, to point out that half the reason Keith hit so hard is that he felt he had lost his closest friend. Maybe, Charlie had said with a shrug, he thought a reaction was better than nothing at all, might draw him out of his shell. 

He’d tried a little more, after that, given himself to a bit more openness. Life had continued to rain down tragedies on their odd family, and he had found himself grateful for that renewed openness, the offer of comfort that was always there when he needed it. They still fought like mad sometimes, but nowadays every instance of that didn’t feel like someone dragging a rusty scalpel along old scars. It felt quite the opposite of that, to be doing this for Keith.

Wandering idly between stalls, he heard the strains of a deep Alpine accent, a man speaking about his sheep farming business, and all of the wonderful creations his wife made with the shorn wool. There, among the cheeses, milks, and soaps, was a basket of plush puppies, one black, with thick, curly fur, among the bunch. 

Perfect.

◃◃◃

If there was one advantage to having attended art school, it was knowing people in the strangest places, and professions. 

Charlie worried his thumb between his teeth, looking with consternation into one of his smaller suitcases, dragged into Keith’s room. An old friend from Harrow, a sculptor, had begun making stuffed versions of some of his pieces when his first granddaughter was born, wanting to give her something far better than “all that normal childish dreck.” It had been an interesting endeavor to behold, but the end results had actually been quite impressive. So much so, that he’d found himself asking for a favor this year. 

Keith, who, after an initial period of making off with his and Stu’s Armstrong records, always displayed a fondness for jazz, had always especially liked the children’s book he had published about Charlie Parker in the ‘60s. No matter how much he moaned about how bad the illustrations were, or what a mess his story composition had been, Keith shook his head and held firm to wanting as many copies as he could scrounge up. He had read it to his kids and grandkids, as well as bringing one on the road to entertain all of the younger members of the extended Stones family. Charlie was fairly sure he got some kind of sick pleasure out of embarrassing him with that. 

Nevertheless, when it had come time to figure out a birthday present for his friend, he had been forced to admit to himself that a plush version of one of his illustrated jazz owl greats would probably please his friend no end. The end result of that now lay, carefully hidden, amongst his ties and bowties, ready to be given in a week’s time. But, Charlie thought with an internal sigh of consternation, Keith did really need the comfort now. He’d be left without any birthday present to give him, though, after a year of careful preparation. 

Sod it, he could trawl around Paris Sunday afternoon, maybe comb through Soho when they returned to London in a few days, and find something almost as good. Making his friend feel safe right now was a bloody sight more important. 

◃◃◃

Deciding, as his bones, joints, and possibly hair protested another shift, that he would have been better off just sleeping on the damned floor, Keith slowly righted himself in the chaise. The plaintive wail of an ambulance siren dragged through the early morning air, the sharp cold and pitch black sky a reminder to all of what an inhospitable time of year it was. A reminder to go back to bed. 

The guitarist looked guiltily at the big brocaded comforter that had been thrown over him sometime in the last few hours, his glance falling on Charlie, who was slumbering noiselessly under a sheet and not too substantial camel colored blanket. Muttering about the stupidity of the man to do such a thing, Keith carefully rearranged it over the drummer, and began to withdraw from the room as quietly as he could. It was doubtful that he would actually get any sleep in his bed, but he wasn’t going to risk waking Charlie flipping to and fro on the punishing furniture, just because there was no longer anyone quite near.

Fiddling with the electronic keycard, Keith almost missed the small package which had been left outside his door. It was an undefined shape, wrapped in brown butcher’s paper and twine, without any kind of note. Bending, he snatched it off the floor, and trod carelessly into his suite. 

Flicking on a bedside lamp, he turned to put the mysterious package down on a frankly quite gaudy chintz chair, his hand brushed against something. It was a small black cat, a very handmade looking multicolored headband wrapped across her head, suspiciously reminiscent of the ones he favored on stage. 

Where the hell could that have come from? 

Perhaps the new plush and the package had something to do with each other. Plucking at the twine like a too taut string, he undid the tight, utilitarian bow and ripped through the thick paper. 

Silky, curling fur met his fingers, and he lifted the object the rest of the way out of its wrapping to find himself holding a puppy, the spitting image of Rasputin, with a carefully engraved leather collar round its neck. Geraniums, entwined with oak leaves. 

Before he could stop to consider just what was going on, the flash of something on the otherwise precisely made bed caught his eye. Tucked fastidiously into the covers, with its head resting against the edge of one of the many gray pillows, was a stuffed owl. Not just any stuffed owl, either. It almost looked as though someone had brought one of Charlie’s doodles to life. In fact-

That’s exactly what it was. Suddenly, Keith understood exactly what had happened. Those three had seen that he misplaced his bear, and, instead of telling him to get over it like the man of many years he was, or sending some roadie out to grab something in the nearest tourist spot, had gone out and tried to find something to comfort him in the dead of night themselves. Had gone out, bought these (or had made, at some point) these things, and snuck them into his room without ever realizing the others had done the same. Just to assuage his stupid fears in the night. To make him feel safe. 

The idiots. 

Dashing roughly at the edge of his eyes, and ignoring the slight dampness which he could feel even on his calloused fingers, he arranged the three little figures carefully on one side of the bed, chuckling wetly at how obvious it was who had gotten each one, then rubbing softy at his breastbone, as he lay down beside them. Love ached a bit, sometimes, and tenderness could rob you of breath. 

He might have been born without brothers, but life had gifted him three of them, all the dearer for having been found and fought for instead of born by his side. 

**Author's Note:**

> (Geraniums and oak leaves, in Victorian flower language, are the symbols of deep friendship).


End file.
